Ask a physicist anything. (2)

Chesterton said:

Can I ask the 1,000th question?

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I don't think there's been a 999 questions in this thread yet.

Wiccan_Child said:

I agree. What's wrong with Occam's Razor? True, it's just a precautionary principle against positing unnecessary entities, but it does serve to let us dismiss overly complex ideas in favour of simpler ones.

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Occam's Razor is an important principle in forming an agenda of hypothesis testing. It is not a test for them.

Say you had an experiment that involves two variables that produce an outcome and you don't know if one variable or both of them have a causal relationship to the outcome. If you design a hypothesis and therefore an experiment on the assumption that the two variables are both causally related to the outcome than it is potentially possible that a false positive will occur. This happens all the time btw, people bring their sick child to the doctor and also pray, the child gets better therefore it must be prayer and medication that helped him.

Occam's Razor suggests an agenda. You hold one variable constant and test the outcome of changes in the other and vice verse. If both those tests fail to produce the outcome then you move onto the more complicated hypothesis.

You never say, with lack of experimental evidence, it is more likely that the single variable idea is more likely than the double variable hypothesis.

Occam's Razor is fine for its function within science but as a positive argument without supporting evidence it is really just a load of circular reasoning. It boils down to "I assume Occam's Razor is more likely to produce the correct hypothesis therefore the hypothesis that I use Occam's Razor to propose is more likely to be correct".

Can you get electricity directly from a fusion reaction without having to heat to steam first?